Nearly 17 years into the war in Afghanistan, there is still no end in sight. Our strategy and goals for the region are murky and ill-defined—and yet, while the violence continues unabated, the media and Congress have turned a blind eye to the conflict.1

Despite the trillions of dollars spent on the so-called War on Terror—a sum that could have sent every young person in the United States to college—we have invested almost nothing in a peace process to draw down our military operations.2